Marilyn Hazel Coburn died peacefully in her Provincetown home on Dec. 26, 2021. She was 95.
Marilyn was born to Ethel and Fred B. Pilkington of Allendale, N.J. on June 4, 1926. The elder of two daughters, she graduated from Ridgewood High School and from Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Va., where she majored in French. She then worked as a bilingual secretary at the New York branch of La Société Générale, the French bank.
In 1948, Marilyn married David M. Colburn Jr., a World War II Navy veteran. Together they raised four children.
Marilyn’s sister Joan introduced her to Provincetown in 1956. It was instant love, and family vacations here followed. From 1965 until 1974, she managed Mayo’s Cape Codder Guest House. In 1968, the family relocated to Provincetown permanently; they purchased the former Freeman’s General Store property on Commercial Street.
The following year, Marilyn wrote a lively calypso-style song for her good friend Vincent Parris, whose steel band Magic and the Boomerangs played at the then-Governor Prence in Truro. Many ideas for a song about Provincetown were beginning to form in her head, but song writing had to be put aside for a time as Marilyn worked hard to support her family’s businesses: David M. Colburn & Son Builders and Colburn Real Estate, from which she retired in 2000.
Marilyn still found time, however, to sing in the choir for several years at St. Mary of the Harbor, to serve as a board member of the Heritage Museum, to sing with the Provincetown Choral Society, and to serve as secretary for the Provincetown Chamber of Commerce, all while raising a family.
In the years after David’s death, Marilyn worked on a book, and in 2015 published Maudie and Sophie, the story of “a woman who gets locked up in a nursing home by her conniving son-in-law” and who “escapes with the help of her best friend, Sophie,” according to the transcript of a PRX podcast called “Romance, Intrigue and Senior Citizens.” It was also the first novel published by the Provincetown Public Press. The town library hosted a well-attended reading.
Around the same time, Marilyn began writing music again, although worsening eyesight made it more and more difficult. Gathering her courage, she called Peter Donnelly, the well-known local musician and co-founder of the Coffeehouse at the Mews, whom she had heard sing at Council on Aging luncheons. She told him she had some songs she’d like to share with him, and they began to rehearse together. She sang songs she composed while waiting for sleep to come at night (she called them her “insomnia collection”) and he put chords to the melodies.
Her long-ago untitled Provincetown song became a joint effort, and over the next 10 years the two performed many times at the Mews to enthusiastic audiences. At Marilyn’s 90th birthday, she and her dear friend Peter sang for proud family members happy to see her realize her dream.
Marilyn is survived by sons David Colburn III of Dennis Port, Paul F. Colburn of Truro, and Peter J. Colburn of Easley, S.C., and by daughter Kathleen M. Blake of Hanover, Pa. She also leaves six grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and many friends. She was predeceased by her husband, David M. Colburn, in 1995.
Family and friends are invited to a memorial service to be held on May 7 at 3 p.m. at St. Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church, 517 Commercial St., Provincetown.
To share a memory or leave an online condolence for the family, visit gatelyfuneralservice.com.
